


Nothing to See Here

by DesdemonaKaylose



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley and his embarrassing ex, Drinking & Talking, Gen, Other, Prompt Fill, short fic, who has been dead for a couple thousand years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And now for something frankly silly</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing to See Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [May-Sparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=May-Sparrow).



> For the prompt:  
> “You think you could write a drunk Crowley who (for whatever reason, you can choose!) refuses to clear it out of his system?”

There are some people who think that a friendship based on getting uproariously pissed at sporadic intervals is not much of a friendship at all. These people would be right.

On a Tuesday night in Soho, two man-shaped beings were well on their way to reaching that much coveted level of intoxication located elusively between Uncomfortably Tipsy and Useless Sodding Sack of Half-Absorbed Alcohol. The wine bottle on the table between them had been present during the last two of these impromptu nightcaps, although it faintly recalled that it had not originally been full of White Italian from the turn of the previous century. 1902 had been a very good year, and so in the course of the decades these two particular creatures had consumed more 1902 vintage than the year had ever actually produced.

Crowley swirled his glass pensively.

“D’you ever wonder why Sampson was such a slut?” he asked the liquid.

“Sampson,” Aziraphale replied, squinting one eye, “was a… thingy… chosen… very important person. You shouldn’t call him that. That thing.”

“Slut?” Crowley said, legitimately uncertain.

“Yes, that thing.”

“But he was,” the demon insisted, with a vague approximation of a winning salesman’s expression. “Never met a man got so enamador… ennnn… hot for Philistine girls.”

“Was very important,” Aziraphale repeated unhappily. “Hair and all that. Strong chap. Quite the bee keeper.”

“Bit dim,” Crowley pointed out.

“Bit,” the angel admitted.

“Broke my arm, he did,” Crowley mumbled, propping up his cheek on his fist. “Tosser.”

“Why’de do that?”

Crowley winced and swallowed more wine than he ought to. He contemplated the empty glass for a moment, and then quickly refilled it and knocked that back as well. “Dumb story,” he said. “’M not nearly drunk enough.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale nodded sagely. “Issit like the time you snogged the pope?”

“Friggin—‘oo told you bout that?”

“Got a memo,” Aziraphale snickered. “Fr’m upstairs.”

“Chr—fer—ssssomebody’s sake. Pope’s one’a ours, why’djou get the memo?”

Aziraphale frowned. “One of ours,” he answered. “Pope. Nature of the job.”

“Oh,” Crowley hummed, thoughtfully. “Guess so. What were we on about?”

A moment of teeth-sucking and brow furrowing followed, and a couple more refills. Any time was a good time for a refill. After it settled back onto the tabletop, the wine bottle was fairly certain that it was fuller than it had been ten minutes before.

“Sampson,” Aziraphale said at last.

“Oh.”

Aziraphale fixed him with a look that was faintly glassy-eyed, but otherwise quite imperious. He had learned that expression from one too many years around the monarchy in the middle half of the millennium. Crowley choked in his haste to down another gulp of wine and dropped his forehead on the table.

“’Member when you di—disco—dis-bodied me in Ur?”

“Sorry,” the angel replied, sheepish. “Arrows.”

“An’ you didn’ see me again fer… decade or so?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“Ran outta bodies,” Crowley grumbled. “With the, yanno… not-bosoms. The man bodies.”

“You had bosoms?” Aziraphale said, squinting.

“Phili… phil… i… stine. Phistin bosoms. Lemme tell you somethin’ bout bosomas,” Crowley said, tapping the table with one neatly manicured nail. “Heavy as a blessed—what’s that, the bird thing. Bird necklace.”

“Albus frost.”

“’snot even a bird.”

“Is too.”

“’Snot.”

“Is.”

“Inn’t.”

“Sampson?” Aziraphale prompted.

“Right.” Crowley peered down at his chest, wrapped up nicely with a black blazer. “Phili bosoms. Cause some trouble, they say. Mess some bloke about. Big on messin’ about Nazarites back in the day, tryin’a… tryin’a do the stuff. With the beard.”

“Er. Crowley, you didn’t—”

The demon nodded miserably.

“But Delilah—“

Crowley raised his hand weakly and promptly dropped his face hard against the flat of the tabletop. “’sme,” he managed, half his mouth smeared against the dusty oak.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale replied, faintly.

Crowley nodded, although considering his perpendicular alignment with the rest of the world, it looked more like he was attempting to wipe the dust off the table with his cheek. That would have been the first dusting the place had seen since it came into new ownership in 1929, if that had in fact been the intent.

"Weren't half decent inna sack," Crowley mumbled. A moment of silence followed, in which both entities carefully considered the sentence previously uttered. A clock ticked. It should be noted that Aziraphale did not actually possess a clock, as it would have cluttered up space that could be given over to shelving. The ticking clock sound is a universal constant in sufficiently uncomfortable scenarios—in fact, the awkwardness of any given situation can actually be measured in inexplicable ticks.

“ _I_ ….” the demon slurred, “don’t think ‘m gonna get sober again. Maybe ever.”

“Wait, Crowley.”

Crowley said nothing.

“Crowley?”

No response.

“ _Crowley_.”

Aziraphale sighed, sobered himself up since _one_ of them had to, and dragged his unconscious drinking partner to the impressively unused sofa at the back of the store.

There are some people who think that a friendship based on getting uproariously pissed at sporadic intervals is not much of a friendship at all. These people would be right. A friendship based on letting your embarrassed and comatose drinking partner sleep on your couch for four days, on the other hand, is a pretty impressive friendship.

It also helps frighten away customers.

 


End file.
